Tuesday, August 16, 2011

With Lots of Help from My Friends - the Grieser Birth Record

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One of the biggest benefits of blogging about genealogy, and having a significant readership, is that readers have much more knowledge and experience in different record types than I do.  I appeal to them once in awhile to help me out, and they always seem to come through.

That was the case this afternoon.  I posted Need Help with German (?) Location asking for help finding where the town of Bühl was in Germany. It was in the Grand Duchy of Baden in 1858 when Ignatius Grieser's marriage record was recorded, which is now Baden-Wuerttemburg.  Several readers commented on the blog post, Nick Gombash commented on Facebook and Taco Goulooze commented on Google Plus.  What does that say about using social media to full advantage?  I really appreciate all the help.

Nick Gombash, who writes Nick Gombash's Genealogy Blog, took some time to try to find other records for the Grieser family in Germany.  He posted on Facebook:

"http://www.landesarchiv-bw.de/plink/?f=5-497525 When you follow the link, click on "Archivalieneinheit einsehen" under the category L 10 Nr. 5669. Navigate to image 128 (Bild 128), entry number 4. Birth of an Ignatius Griesser in 1835. The village is Bühl, part of the town Klettgau, within district Waldshut, in Baden.  The town is full of this Griesser family.. they're on every page!"

I clicked on the link and saw:


It's in German, of course.  I quickly installed Google Translate and it translated much of the text and buttons into English for me:


I had to do that for each page.  I finally found the right links to click, and saw:



There were  350 digitized pages in the dropdown menu.  Nick had told me to check out page 128, so I selected that from the dropdown menu:



The image for the page is at the bottom of the screen above.  There is a Zoom dropdown list in the menu line, so I clicked on 100% and saw:


Page 128 has the image of the start of the 1835 birth records in Bühl.  The record for the birth of Ignatius Griesser is the fourth item on the page.  Nick was able to translate some of it for me.  He thinks it says that Ignatius Griesser was born on 30 January 1835 at 5 o'clock in the afternoon to ????? Griesser and Anna Weissenberger (?).  The German script is difficult to read.  Nick is still working on the first name of the father of Ignatius.  It is also the first name of the clerk (Mr. Zimmermann?) that recorded many of the entries in this book in the time period, so there are many examples to look at for clues.  

How did Nick accomplish this?  How did he find this particular record?  Did he start in about 1830 and work his way through the book?  Or did he start in about 1840 and work backwards in time?  I don't know, but he found it in less than one hour after I posted my blog post.  Is there an index available online?  I don't think so.  I hope he tells us about the search to find it.

I've enjoyed finding the record online, then trying to figure out what the names are.  I used the German script table on the Smoot Family Association website - http://www.smoot-family.us/germanhand/ - to try to decipher the father's name. 

Thank you so much to Nick Gombash for geneablogger research far above the hoped-for level.  Genea-Musings readers and Geneabloggers are really the best! 

My wife wondered what I did all afternoon, since I did none of the chores she had planned for me to perform.  I told her at dinner that Nick Gombash had found the birth record of one of her second great-grandfathers.  The conversation went like this:

"Who?" she asked. 

"Ignatius Grieser" I said. 

"She: Who?" 

Me: "Your father's mother's grandfather." 

She:  "That's nice.  Who's Nick?  Do you know him?" 

Me: "He's a geneablogger friend that I've never met.  We owe him big-time." 

She:  "Great.  Where does he live? When can we go?"

Me:  "I don't know.  Sometime."

7 comments:

Thomas MacEntee said...

Nick is a great guy and a great asset to the genealogy community. Plus he lives here in Illinois! Perhaps a meet up on your FGS trip here is in order!

Dana said...

What a great story! Sometimes the twists and turns of finding a record is an even better tale than the one the record tells itself. Great example of how awesome the genealogy community is in helping someone in need, too.

Susan Clark said...

What fun! Nick is one of the most generous researchers I've "met". He's offered me help with my Hungarian/Rusyn family. Good to know he's a talented German researcher, too.

NickMGombash said...

Hey Randy.. the name is definitely Xaver. I found the marriage record for Xaver Griesser and Anna Weissenberger. (http://www.landesarchiv-bw.de/plink/?f=5-497527) category L 10 Nr. 5671. When you navigate to the images, it's image 19 (Bild 19). It will come up as page 11 and their entry is number 3 (left side of the page).

The year for these marriages is 1820. The date is in the first line of the paragraph: "siebenzehnsten Aprill"; April 17th. The groom is the 25 year old Xaver Griesser, son of Xaver Griesser and Katharina Keller. What's odd, is that I can't find the bride's name in the paragraph at all. There is no underlined bride's name like in the other marriages on these two pages. Her name is clearly written on the side though "und Anna Weissenberger".. and Anna Weissenberger. Strange.

Stay on that page and look at the last marriage on the right page. The marriage date is "zehnsten Heumonat"; July 10th. The groom is Joh. (Johann) Z..? (middle name definitely begins with Z) Griesser. He is 21 years old and the son of Franz Griesser and Katharina Hofmayer. The bride is Monika Griesser. She is 24 years old and the daughter of Xaver Griesser and Katharina Keller.

Monika is a sister to Xaver! :)

Also.. there's a Dörflinger marriage below the Xaver Griesser marriage. I wonder where Elyse's family is from? :)

Elizabeth O'Neal said...

Nick's a great guy who will practically drop everything to help a fellow genealogist. Sounds like I'll have to connect with him on some German research of my own!

Lynn Palermo said...

What a great story, kudos to Nick! I will have to keep him in mind for my own German research - reading that stuff is a bugger!

NickMGombash said...

I'm more than happy to help reading these kinds of German documents, if anyone need assistance. :)